


Sleeplessness

by bluemoodblue



Category: October Daye Series - Seanan McGuire
Genre: August and Raysel are roommates, Awkward Sleepover, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Late Night Conversations, and you have to COEXIST, sometimes you crash at your sister’s house and your cousin is already there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26719369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoodblue/pseuds/bluemoodblue
Summary: The reality - the fact that she would be on an air mattress, sharing a room with a cousin she'd never properly met - was the kind of alternative August felt she could live with. Even if Rayseline kept glaring at her from across the room. Even if she could feel Rayseline's eyes on her now, well into the morning when they should both have been asleep, peering down at her from the bed.
Relationships: August Torquill & Rayseline Torquill, October "Toby" Daye & August Torquill
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	Sleeplessness

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt on tumblr: “Toby's promised Raysel a place to stay for a while, and August probably needs a place if she doesn't want to go to the undersea. There's only one guest room. Cue Roommates From Hell. (I feel like they have bunk beds)”

The last time she was here, her head was slammed into the wall.

It was the wrong mindset to have, August knew. She was here to ask her sister a favor - her sister, she thought deliberately, because she was going to have to get used to the idea now that they'd claimed the same father and had that tie between them - and realistically, the worst October would do was laugh in her face and say no. She wouldn't attack her on sight, not if August didn't give her a reason to.

Still, when her sister's fiance shook his head and muttered that October was too kind for her own good as October opened the door wider for her to enter, smiling in a way that promised pain, August couldn't help glancing at that part of the wall. October must have noticed; she smiled wider when August met her eye again.

The reality - the fact that she would be on an air mattress, sharing a room with a cousin she'd never properly met - was the kind of alternative August felt she could live with. Even if Rayseline kept glaring at her from across the room. Even if she could feel Rayseline's eyes on her now, well into the morning when they should both have been asleep, peering down at her from the bed.

"What do you want," she hissed into the artificial darkness created by the curtains. She wasn't going to get any sleep being watched like this, and she'd promised up and down that she'd start looking for her own place as soon as possible. August didn't want to depend on her sister's good will any longer than she absolutely had to.

"You don't look much like him." Rayseline had the nerve to sound like she wasn't even tired, even though she'd insisted on the bed seeing as how she'd gotten to Toby first and was sworn a year in her service besides.

"Like who?"

"Like Simon Torquill." 

August glanced up at the bed; her cousin wasn't glaring anymore. Instead, she looked somewhere between bored and thoughtful, and August didn't know if that was a good or bad sign. "I take after my mother," she supplied, trying not to let what was almost certainly a jab sting too sharply. They had to get along, if they were both going to stay in October's house. She'd let them in and she could kick them out just as easily, and maybe literally.

But it _did_ sting, hearing it from Rayseline - Rayseline, with her fox-red hair and Daoine Sidhe blood, who could have been Simon's daughter so easily. She looked every inch the part. Even if she wasn't, she would always look more like Simon's than August did.

"Good chance, too, or _we'd_ look like twins." Rayseline lay back on the bed, and August hoped for just a moment that was the end of it. "I'm keeping you awake because I think you owe me one sleepless night."

August scowled at the ceiling, since directing her ire at the bed would be wasted effort. "Because my father wronged you?" She'd heard... pieces. She wasn't ready, yet, to face the man her father had been in the years she'd been gone. There would be time for that, to swallow one hot coal at a time and try to keep herself from burning.

"Because you chose him." August raised her voice to protest, and got a pillow in her face for her trouble. She could have thrown it back, but cushioning on the air mattress was sparse and instead she angrily added it to the one already under her head. "I get it, bad options all around. I'm trying to be fair. I figure one sleepless night isn't much to ask, for now - especially since Toby isn't going to ask you for anything."

"And what exactly am I paying for." It sounded like a child's logic, and if August was less committed to making this work, she would have said so. It would have been horribly, deliciously easy to drive an immovable wedge between them, to be the one holding power in the hows and whys of their interactions. It would have been just like Amandine, and it was that understanding more than anything else that held her tongue.

"The nightmares. I've had so many sleepless nights avoiding the dark - I think you can afford one." And what could she possibly say to that?

They talked about nothing topics - the other people in October's house, the things they both remembered about a Shadowed Hills of the past that almost certainly didn't exist anymore, the strange quirks of the mortal world that they couldn't quite understand. It was a tenuous peace that probably wouldn't last through the sunset, but it was something. A start, if they both decided it was still worth it in the dark of night. It was too early to say.

It was maybe an hour or two shy of sunset when Rayseline stopped answering, finally asleep. It should have been enough permission for August to sleep, too, but when she closed her eyes all she could think of was Rayseline, in a voice that sounded much too young for a grown woman, asking if she wasn't owed just one sleepless night. It was a silly promise to hold her to - it didn't mean anything, and it wasn't going to fix anything that was already broken - but August lay on the mattress, staring at nothing and wondering why it was important to her that she not fail.

I can't pay for what my parents did, August thought. And then, in the next moment, reluctantly added: but perhaps I should try to be better than those debts, all the same.

Quietly, she crept from her bed and then from the room; if she was staying up, she may as well do it properly. She didn't realize the tv was on until she reached the bottom of the stairs and it was too late to retreat, quietly playing mortal nonsense low enough not to disturb the rest of the house. August froze, unsure if it would be a better idea to creep into the kitchen before she was seen, or make her presence known to whoever was on the couch - she'd heard October's house was frequently full of strange people.

"You can stop acting like a burglar - you're really bad at it, and I definitely don't recommend it as a career choice." October's voice was sarcastic as ever, even under the layer of exhaustion that covered it. August followed it to the living room, where her sister was laying on the couch. "Can't sleep?"

Can't sleep, not allowed to sleep by some strange price set to her by her cousin - it all amounted to the same thing. August shook her head, and October gestured to the recliner. August sat, hesitant.

"You don't have to be afraid of me," October said after a minute, not looking at her anymore. "I don't make a habit of attacking people in my own home."

"I'll try not to give you a reason," August supplied. The pause was long and awkward, even the noise from the tv doing little to break the uncomfortable silence. "Do you always stay up this late?" August finally managed.

October didn't look at her. "Woke up," she answered eventually. "I couldn't get back to sleep, and Tybalt has to be up early tomorrow. He'll pout at me, but it'll be after he’s gotten enough sleep."

A nightmare, maybe. A nightmare that her father might have put in her sister's head, lasting damage from a wound dealt years ago that August was in no position to prevent but that still left a creeping tendril of guilt in her stomach. She could ask, she thought, looking over at October who was sleepily blinking at the figures on the screen; her guard was down, and it was maybe the kind of thing she wouldn't hide from August anyway. If anyone would tell her the truth, it would be October.

August wasn't sure she was ready to hear it.

She didn't ask anything; instead, she curled up in the recliner and let the rest of her first night in her sister's house pass in silence.


End file.
